To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)

To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1) Page 5

Except she wasn’t.

Sam swore softly and halted. He braced his palms on his knees as he panted, trying to catch his breath. Lady Emeline might look like an Irish maid, but in her elegant clothes and with an accent that could cut ice, no one in his right mind would mistake her for one. Not even an unsophisticated backwoodsman from the frontiers of the New World. His money could buy a lot of things, but a woman from the highest tiers of the English aristocracy wasn’t one of them.

The moon was beginning to set. Time to go home. Sam looked around. Small shops lined the narrow street, their overhanging upper stories looming above. He’d never been in this part of London before, but that wouldn’t stop him from finding his way back. He started at a slow jog. The return journey was always the hardest, his initial freshness and energy blown away. Now his chest labored to draw breath, and his muscles began to ache at the continued exertion. Then, too, the areas where he’d been wounded made themselves known, throbbing as he ran. Remember, the scars groaned, remember where the tomahawk sawed your flesh, where the ball burrowed next to bone. Remember that you are forever marked, the survivor, the living, the one left to bear witness.

Sam ran on, despite aches and memories. This was the point that separated those who would continue from those who fell by the wayside. The trick was to acknowledge the pain. To embrace it. Pain kept you awake. Pain meant that you still lived.

He didn’t know how much longer he ran, but when he again ducked into the mews behind his rented house, the moon had set. He was so weary that he almost didn’t see the watcher in time. A man lurked, big and solid, beside the corner of the stables. It was a measure of Sam’s tiredness that he nearly ran by him. But he didn’t. He stopped and slid into the shadows of his neighbor’s stables. He peered at the watcher. The man was barrel-shaped and wore a scarlet coat and a battered tricorne, fraying gray about the edges. Sam had seen him before. Once today, across the street as he and Rebecca had left Lady Emeline’s house, and yesterday as Sam had entered his rented carriage. The shape and the way the man stood was the same. The man was following him.

Sam took a few seconds to steady his breath before drawing two lead balls from his waistcoat pocket. They were small things, no bigger than his thumb, but they were useful for a man who enjoyed running the streets of London in the dark. He curled his right fist around the balls.

Silently, Sam rushed at Scarlet Coat, catching the bigger man’s hair from behind with his left hand. He punched the man swiftly in the side of his head. “Who sent you?”

Scarlet Coat was fast for a big man. He twisted and tried to elbow Sam in the belly. Sam punched him again, once, twice, his fist connecting each time with the other man’s face.

“Sod it!” Scarlet Coat gasped. His London accent was so thick, Sam could hardly make out the words.

The man aimed a fist at his face. Sam leaned to the side, and the blow glanced off his chin. He punched quick and hard at the man’s exposed armpit. Scarlet Coat groaned, bending over his hurt side. When he straightened, he had a wicked blade in his hand. Sam circled, his fists held ready, looking for another opening. Scarlet Coat struck with his knife, but Sam knocked the man’s arm aside. The knife spun to the ground, moonlight gleaming on what looked like a white bone handle. Sam feinted to the left, and when the other man lunged, he caught his right arm and pulled the man in toward himself.

“Your employer,” Sam hissed as he wrenched the man’s arm.

The man twisted violently and caught Sam a second blow to his chin. Sam staggered and that was all Scarlet Coat needed. The other man was off, running away down the mews. He ducked and grabbed his knife as he ran past it, and then he disappeared around the end of the mews.

Sam started after him instinctively—the predator always pursues a fleeing prey—but he stopped before the mews spilled onto the cross street. He’d been running for hours now; his wind was no longer fresh. If he did catch Scarlet Coat, he’d be in no condition to make the other man tell him what he knew. Sam sighed, pocketed the lead balls, and headed back to his own house.

The dawn was already breaking.

Chapter Three

One day as Iron Heart was sweeping the street, a procession rode by. There were running footmen dressed in gilt livery, a brace of guards mounted on snow-white chargers, and finally a gold carriage with two footmen clinging behind. Iron Heart could do naught but gape as the carriage came closer. When it was directly beside him, the curtain shifted and he saw the face of the lady within. And what a face it was! She was perfectly formed, her complexion so white and smooth she might’ve been ivory. Iron Heart stared after her.

Beside him a voice cackled. “Do you think Princess Solace beautiful?”

Iron Heart turned and found a wizened old man standing where before there had been no one. He frowned, but he had to admit that the princess was most lovely.

“Then,” said the old man, leaning so close that Iron Heart could smell the stink of his breath, “would you like to marry her?”

—from Iron Heart

Emeline stepped into the afternoon sunshine and gave a sigh of pleasure. “That was a most satisfying shop.”

“But,” Miss Hartley panted beside her, “do I really need all those frocks? Won’t one or two ball gowns do?”

“Now, Miss Hartley—”

“Oh, please, won’t you call me Rebecca?”

Emeline tempered her stern tone. The girl was terribly sweet. “Yes, of course. Rebecca, then. It is most important that you be properly attired—”

“In gold leaf, if possible,” a masculine voice cut into Emeline’s homily.

“Oh, Samuel!” Rebecca exclaimed. “Your chin looks even worse than this morning.”

Emeline turned, carefully smoothing out her brow. She didn’t want Mr. Hartley to see either her vexation at the interruption or the odd flutter of excitement she felt low in her belly. Surely, such tumult wasn’t altogether becoming in a woman of her age.

Mr. Hartley’s chin was indeed a darker shade of plum than it’d been since Emeline had last seen him. Apparently, he’d run into a doorway sometime in the night. An oddly clumsy accident for such a graceful man. He was now leaning against a lamppost, his booted feet crossed at the ankle, looking like he’d been there for quite some time. And he had if he’d been waiting in this way since the ladies had entered the dressmaker’s three hours ago. The awful man couldn’t have been standing out here the entire time, could he?

Emeline felt a twinge of guilt. “Mr. Hartley, you do know that it’s quite acceptable for you to leave us whilst we finish our shopping?”

He raised his eyebrows, and the sardonic expression in his eyes said that he knew perfectly well the niceties of a ladies’ shopping day. “I wouldn’t dream of abandoning you, my lady. I apologize if my presence is irksome.”

At her side, Tante Cristelle clicked her tongue. “You talk like a courtier, monsieur. I do not think it becomes you.”

Mr. Hartley grinned and bowed to her aunt, not at all put out. “I am suitably reprimanded, ma’am.”

“Yes, well,” Emeline interjected. “I think the glover’s next. Just down here is the most wonderful shop—”

“Perhaps you ladies would like some refreshment?” Mr. Hartley asked. “I’d never forgive myself if you fainted away from the exertion of your labors.”

Emeline was forming a suitably regretful reply when Tante Cristelle spoke first. “Some tea would be very welcome.”

Now Emeline couldn’t decline him without looking churlish, and the dratted man knew it. The corner of his mouth curled as he watched her with warm brown eyes.

She pursed her lips. “Thank you, Mr. Hartley. You’re very kind.”

He inclined his head, straightened away from the lamppost, and held out his arm to her. “Shall we?”

Why did the man only remember the proprieties when it suited him? Emeline smiled stiffly and placed her fingertips on his sleeve, conscious of the muscle beneath the fabric. He glanced at her hand and up at her, cocking an eyebrow. She tilted her chin and began walking, Tante Cristelle and the girl following behind. Her aunt seemed to be lecturing Rebecca on the importance of shoes.

Around them, the fashionable Mayfair throng ebbed and flowed. Young bucks loitered in doorways, gossiping and eyeing the grandly dressed ladies. A dandy strolled past in a pink-powdered wig, his long walking stick extravagantly employed. Emeline heard a snort from Tante Cristelle. She inclined her head to the Misses Stevens as they passed. The elder girl nodded most properly. The younger, a pretty if vacuous redhead in overwide panniers, giggled into her gloved hand.

Emeline lowered her brows in disapproval at the girl. “How do you find our capital, Mr. Hartley?”

“Crowded.” He dipped his head close to hers as he spoke. She caught a pleasing scent on his breath but couldn’t place it.

“You are used to a smaller city?” She lifted her skirt as they approached a puddle of something noxious. Mr. Hartley drew her closer to him when they skirted it, and for a moment she felt the warmth of his body through wool and linen.

“Boston is smaller than London,” he replied. They separated and she was chagrined to realize that she missed his warmth. “But it is just as crowded. I’m not used to cities at all.”

“You were raised in the countryside?”

“More like the wilderness.”

She turned in surprise at his answer just as he must’ve leaned toward her again. Suddenly his face was only inches from hers. Fine lines surrounded his coffee-colored eyes, deepening as he smiled at her. She noticed that a thin, pale scar lay under his left eye.

Then she looked away. “Were you raised by wolves, then, Mr. Hartley?”

“Not quite.” His voice was amused, despite the sharpness of her words. “My father was a trapper on the Pennsylvania frontier. We lived in a cabin he’d built from logs that still had the bark on them.”

This sounded very primitive. Actually, she had trouble imagining his home, it was so foreign to what she knew. “How were you educated until you went to the boys school?”

“My mother taught me reading and writing,” Mr. Hartley said. “I learned about tracking, hunting, and the woods from my father. He was a very good woodsman.”

They passed a bookshop with a bright red sign hanging so low that it nearly brushed Mr. Hartley’s tricorne. Emeline cleared her throat. “I see.”

“Do you?” he asked softly. “My world back then is a far cry from this.” He nodded at the noisy London street. “Can you imagine a forest so quiet you can hear the leaves fall? Trees so big a grown man cannot wrap his arms about their girth?”

She shook her head. “It’s difficult to picture. Your woodlands sound very strange to me. But you left those woods, didn’t you?”

He was watching the flow of the crowd about them as they walked, but now he glanced down at her.

She drew in a breath, staring into his dark eyes. “That must have been quite a change, leaving the freedom of the forest for a school.”

One corner of his mouth tilted up, and he looked away. “It was, but boys are adaptable. I learned how to follow the rules and which boys to stay away from. And I was big, even then. That helped.”

Emeline shuddered. “They seem so savage, boarding schools.”

“Boys are savage little beasts, by and large.”

“What of the teachers?”

He shrugged. “Most are competent. Some are unhappy men who dislike boys. But there are others who truly love their profession and care for the children.”

Emeline knit her brows. “What a very different childhood you and your sister must have had. You said she grew up in the city of Boston?”

“Yes.” For the first time, his voice sounded troubled. “Sometimes I think our childhoods were too different.”